The Guardian today enthused about a new study proposing a £400 billion (US$500 billion) plan to refreeze the Arctic "before the ice melts." Physicist Steven Desch and his colleagues at Arizona State University want to replenish Arctic sea ice "by building 10 million wind-powered pumps over the Arctic ice cap," the Guardian reports.

"The pumps could add an extra metre (3 ft) of sea ice to the Arctic's current layer, Desch argues. The current cap rarely exceeds 2-3 metres in thickness and is being eroded constantly as the planet succumbs to climate change." "The 2015 Paris agreement to limit global warming will be insufficient to prevent the region's sea ice disappearing completely in summer, possibly by 2030," said Desch. "Thicker ice would mean longer-lasting ice."

Reminds me of Al Gore's ridiculous2007, 2008 and 2009 assertionsthat the Arctic could expect ice-free summers by 2013. The article goes on to bemoan the "paucity of sea ice," warning that "most scientists expect that, at current emission rates, the Arctic will be reliably free of sea ice in summer by 2030."

"By "free", the article continues, "they mean there will be less than 1m sq km of sea ice left in the Arctic." Did you catch that? Words are so conveniently malleable, aren't they? They want us to accept their definition that "ice-free" means there will be less than one million square kilometers of sea ice left in the Arctic.

One million square kilometers of ice would be enough ice to entirely cover sixteen - count em, 16! - states in the United States.

That would be enough ice to cover all of Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina - mountains, lakes, rivers, streams, roads, cities, everything! - with a three-foot-thick layer of ice.

Reader Comments

It's pretty obvious that some scientists and researchers are not as intelligent as everyone thinks they are. The ice shelf's are melting because of greed. But it seems that no one is prepared to admit that the way we are living, in this so called civilization, is the reason all these environmental problems are happening. No one is going to fix the ice shelf. The ice shelf will fix itself when we stop being so stupid, thinking money is the most important thing that exists. And not thinking very much about what we are doing to acquire it.

We are constantly destroying what is natural to make what is unnatural.